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[lojban-beginners] Re: A few questions about chapters 18 and 19
On 11/29/06, turnip <turnip@bcpl.net> wrote:
FINALLY finished the Lojban Reference Grammar! (Yes, there was a long hiatus
there). Anyway, a few questions. In Chapter 18:
8.13) ro ratcu ka'e citka da'a ratcu
all rats can eat all-but-one rats.
All rats can eat all other rats.
Does this imply that each rat can eat EVERY RAT but one? That's a lot of rats
for one rat to eat. Or is it ambiguous if it means some subset of all-but-one
rats? How would one disambiguate the two cases, if the ambiguity is there as
written?
It means that for each rat x, all but one rat are such that x can eat it.
The one rat that x cannot eat being presumably x itself, although this
is not stated. It doesn't really say whether this situation still holds after
the rat has already eaten a few. Initially, for each rat, all but one rat are
potential dinner. Obviously once x has eaten y, y can no longer eat
any rat, so the sentence will stop being true right after the first eating
anyway.
In Chapter 19, with "si": Can I assume that a cmavo cluster requires a "si"
for each of the component cmavo to completely erase, like: najenai si si si ?
Yes, each cmavo is always a separate word, even if written together.
(They don't have to be written together either, that's optional.)
9.5) la tcarlis. cusku lo'u le ninmu cu morsi le'u
.iku'i ri jmive
Charlie says [quote] le ninmu cu morsi [unquote].
However, the-last-mentioned is-alive.
Charlie says ``le ninmu cu morsi'', but he is alive.
Why doesn't "ri" refer back to "lo'u le ninmu cu morsi le'u", i.e. asserting
that the utterance is alive? Isn't that the most recent sumti?
Probably. It has never been very clear to me which sumti are skipped
by {ri} and which are not.
mu'o mi'e xorxes